South (Chantal Akerman, 1999)

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's documentary South, which premiered in 1999, centres on racial violence in the southern US.  The film examines the terrible aftermath of the brutal and senseless killing of James Byrd Jr., an African-American man who was murdered by a trio of white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998.  In South's early stages, Akerman's approach is near-Lynchian in its depiction of the horrors that lurk beneath the surface: the film opens with a series of tranquil and prosaic shots of Jasper, capturing quotidian life in the Deep South; however, as the narrative unspools, these images take on a different hue, reflecting the underlying racial tensions and historical weight of the region.

One of the film's most striking features is its use of long, static shots; Akerman largely allows the visuals to speak for themselves, creating a palpable sense of stillness.  The juxtaposition of the placid scenery with the horrific details of Byrd's death—he was dragged behind a truck for three miles, and his remains were recovered from 81 places—creates a queasy contrast that underlines the viciousness of the crime.  The film includes a number of interviews with local residents, police officials, and members of the wider African-American community, providing a varied perspective on the legacy of the murder.  While insightful, these sequences are eclipsed by poignant footage of Byrd's memorial service.

But South is not just about James Byrd's lynching: it is a broader statement on the embedded nature of racism, and the film's meditative tone invites the audience to consider hate crimes and their lasting impact on individuals, communities and society.  While South may be challenging for some viewers due to its deliberate pacing—despite being a mere 71 minutes long—and difficult subject matter, it is a profoundly moving and important work that grapples with a shameful episode in recent history.  Akerman's sensitive direction and the evocative imagery—the protracted final shot, as seen in the clip below, is gasp-inducing—make South a haunting and harrowing experience, one that lingers in the mind for days.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Raindance 2025: Our Happy Place (Paul Bickel, 2024)

For his feature debut, the Raindance-selected Our Happy Place, Paul Bickel has proved to be an extremely hands-on filmmaker, and a brief glance at the end credits reveals the extent of his involvement; beyond Bickel's duties as actor-writer-director, his responsibilities include editing, producing, makeup, cinematography, art direction, and recording the sound.  Bickel's multitasking is a direct result of the constraints imposed by COVID-19, as opposed to a rabid desire to control virtually every aspect of this handsome-looking production.  We should also note the fine contributions of Bickel's on-screen (and real-life) partner, Raya Miles, who not only impresses as the film's star but also serves as one of the producers.

Our Happy Place sees Miles and Bickel play, yep, Raya and Paul, a couple living in a remote cabin in the woods while the pandemic rages on; it's a beautiful house, one surrounded by jaw-dropping scenery, and there are certainly far worse places to spend lockdown.  But Raya and Paul's domestic situation is not a happy one: he's catatonic and bedridden, while Raya is his sole carer, and it's clear that she's mourning the carefree life the couple once enjoyed.  While the days may be rather gloomy, the nights are flat-out terrifying as Raya is plagued by a series of gruesome nightmares, each of which ends with her waking alone in a nearby forest, lying in a freshly-dug grave whose exact location changes with every bad dream.

In a bid to break the cycle, Raya, in a FaceTime chat with her worried friend Amy (Death Proof's Tracie Thoms), hatches a plan to stay awake until dawn, but this and subsequent efforts make no difference in terms of stopping Raya's nightly ordeal.  At Amy's prompting, Raya maps out the various grave sites, extrapolating that these plots are gradually getting closer to Paul and Raya's home.  Where this is all headed is quite the mystery—indeed, the film generally proves as discombobulating for the viewer as this experience is for Raya; only once, in a scene where Raya goes to pick up her mail, does Bickel show his hand a bit too much, but little is telegraphed in a work that keeps us guessing for the bulk of its runtime.

Some will struggle with Our Happy Place's somewhat repetitive nature as Raya endures night after night of torment, but it's a film that's worth sticking with.  The payoff is nicely rewarding, with Bickel eventually pulling the disparate threads together in a way that makes for a satisfying dénouement, one that put me briefly in mind of the very last scene in Twin Peaks: The Return.  There is no deus ex machina ending here, but rather a carefully thought-out conclusion that feels earned by all the groundwork laid out in the previous 80 minutes.  Filmed entirely in and around Bickel and Miles' eerily quiet southern Californian home, this tense low-budget horror stands as a robust example of pandemic-era indie filmmaking.

Darren Arnold

Images: Strike Media

Summer's Camera (Divine Sung, 2025)

Divine Sung's feature debut Summer's Camera, which had its world premiere at this year's BFI Flare, is a charming coming-of-age tale that examines the themes of first love and grief.  This Korean-set film follows Summer, a teenager who becomes enamoured with Yeonwoo, the standout football player at her high school.  Summer—who has a wonderfully analogue hobby in the form of film photography—is seldom spotted without the camera of the title, which once belonged to her father and houses a roll of film he began before his untimely death.  Quite understandably, Summer can't bring herself to take the final few photographs.

This changes, however, once Yeonwoo quite literally enters the frame, stirring emotions in Summer that inspire her to click the shutter of the Nikon until the film runs out.  Once the photographs are developed, Summer studies both her shots of Yeonwoo and the pictures taken by her dad, and in the latter set she notices a man she doesn't recognise.  It's not exactly the severed ear that kickstarts the events of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, but given that Summer seems unconvinced by the official version of her father's death—it's said he died in a car crash—the stage appears to be set for a mystery in which she will play detective.

Yet Divine Sung proceeds to wrongfoot her audience by having Summer track down the mystery man—who, it transpires, owns a hair salon—in short order, leaving the film to unfold as a character study, one that deftly captures the peculiar combination of joy and awkwardness that is so often a feature of first love.  Sung is aided by a note-perfect performance from Kim Si-a as Summer; hitherto best known for her prominent supporting role in the Netflix film Kill Boksoon, Kim is entirely convincing as the high schooler attempting to reconcile the emotions of a grieving daughter with those of a new girlfriend.

Sung's movie is beautifully shot, with much emphasis on the warm, tactile nature of "real" photography as Summer carefully handles her camera equipment.  The film possesses an oneiric quality that serves to place Summer in a tolerant, gracious society, with this ethereal atmosphere only undercut by the incongruous punk rock songs that bookend the film.  Yet such dissonance reflects both the protagonist's jumble of feelings and the difficulties of navigating those oh-so-tricky teenage years.  Summer's Camera may look controlled and measured, but an undercurrent of divine chaos lies beneath its sweet, stately surface.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)

Hands-down the finest film of 2024, Jane Schoenbrun's jaw-dropping sophomore feature I Saw the TV Glow is included in BFI Flare's Best of Year strand, where it plays tomorrow alongside Queer, Will & Harper and Power Alley.  Schoenbrun's debut feature, the lo-fi experimental horror We're All Going to the World's Fair, was an unsettling and narratively challenging effort that centred on a sinister online game; while that ambitious, creepypasta-like film heralded the arrival of an exciting new talent, it only hinted at what the filmmaker would achieve with their next feature.  In many ways, We're All Going to the World's Fair feels more like a precursor to Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink than it does to I Saw the TV Glow, despite some obvious thematic connections between Schoenbrun's films—which form part of a trilogy that will be capped by the director's debut novel Public Access Afterworld.   

I Saw the TV Glow wears its influences on its sleeve, and the core of the film's DNA can be traced to Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, the work of David Lynch in general and Twin Peaks in particular, and The Smashing Pumpkins' track "Tonight, Tonight" (and its Méliès-inspired video).  Schoenbrun's film begins, almost in medias res, in the analogue mid-90s, when teenagers Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) bond over young adult TV show The Pink Opaque, which centres on two girls who share a psychic connection they use to fight evil; Owen isn't allowed to stay up to watch the programme when it airs, so Maddy supplies him with grainy VHS tapes of the episodes.  When Maddy suddenly goes missing, presumed dead, the series is cancelled; but she resurfaces eight years later, prompting a confounded Owen to rewatch the frankly terrifying finale of The Pink Opaque.

Looking to explain her disappearance, Maddy takes Owen to a bar called the Double Lunch, a venue that appears in both reality and The Pink Opaque, and as such seems to serve as a nexus between worlds; in an overt reference to Twin Peaks: The Return's Roadhouse and its musical guests, we watch Sloppy Jane perform the mesmerising "Claw Machine" on stage before Maddy embarks on her story.  The detached, dissociative Owen, who once reneged on plans to run away with Maddy, again loses his nerve as she outlines what he needs to do in order to emerge from his torpor, and Maddy subsequently vanishes for good.  Years and decades pass as Owen works at a cinema, then an indoor amusement park, while Maddy and the series seem all but absent from his thoughts—until one rainy, restless night, when he decides to stream The Pink Opaque, which is now quite different from how he remembers it.

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like The Pink Opaque, one of the protagonists, Tara, is played by singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan, whose band Snail Mail contribute a cover of "Tonight, Tonight" to the film's soundtrack; moreover, Amber Benson, who played Tara Maclay in Buffy, appears here as the mother of one of Owen's schoolmates.  Yet this meta-trivia never proves distracting; somehow, the haunting I Saw the TV Glow manages to be both immersive and self-reflexive, and its beguiling crepuscular world(s) may make the viewer as obsessed with the film as Maddy and Owen are with the unnerving YA show.  This eerie, near-unclassifiable work is no mere pastiche; it's a heartbreaking, highly singular piece of mise en abyme cinema, one that gets under your skin and stays there for days.

Darren Arnold

Images: A24

David Lynch (1946–2025)

"I'll see you again in 25 years"

RIP, Mr Lynch.

Image: StudioCanal

Coma (Bertrand Bonello, 2022)

Three years on from his excellent Zombi Child, Bertrand Bonello returns with his latest feature, Coma, which screens today and tomorrow as part of the London Film Festival.  The film serves as the final instalment of the director's loose trilogy on youth which began with 2016's Nocturama, and it's a strangely moving affair; there's an added poignancy from the fact that it features the late Gaspard Ulliel's last performance.  Compared with its two predecessors, Coma is something of a scaled-down work, which isn't too surprising when you learn that it was made during lockdown.  As with a number of other filmmakers, Bonello has used the constraints imposed by COVID-19 to his advantage, with the necessarily smaller canvas leading the director to some fine creative choices.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, screen technology—which, during lockdown, gave so many of us a much-needed window to the world—is at the centre of Coma, as its bedroom-bound main character looks to connect with others.

That protagonist, impressively played by Bonello's Zombi Child star Louise Labèque, is a nameless teenage girl grappling with one of the early lockdowns enforced by France as COVID spread around the world.  We observe her as she spends her days glued to various screens, in the process catching up with her friends via Zoom calls and taking in various YouTube clips.  Her attention is drawn to one influencer in particular, Patricia Coma (Julia Faure), a rather disconcerting presence whose videos cover a range of topics, although she's frequently seen peddling the Revelator, an electronic toy that will be instantly familiar to everyone who has ever played memory skill game Simon.  The girl is soon in possession of one of these devices, although it's not clear how she obtained it; as the long days allow our protagonist to master the game's lengthy, complex sequences, it appears that the Revelator may have a purpose beyond simply testing short-term memory.    

Among this sea of gadgets, however, there is a refreshingly analogue activity in the form of an ongoing stop-motion melodrama performed by the girl's Barbie dolls (voiced by the likes of Bonello alumni Ulliel and Louis Garrel), whose story is punctuated by eerie, inappropriate canned laughter that brings to mind the anthropomorphic rabbits of David Lynch's Inland Empire.  Yet Coma's strangest passages emerge when the girl goes to sleep, as during the night she is transported to an unsettling twilight world, one largely populated by the dead.  Patricia Coma, who as far as we know is still alive, can also be spotted in this realm; moreover, the YouTuber tells the girl that this is the only location where it's possible to exercise free will.  With this in mind, it really does appear that, as Brian Molko of Placebo once sang, "the only place you're truly free is cosy in your dreams".

Clocking in at just 80 minutes, Coma is as modest temporally as it is spatially.  It is, however, a deceptively slight affair in which Bonello manages to cover a great deal of ground, with subjects ranging from climate change and COVID to the roles both technology and Gen Z will play in the planet's future.  With its multiple ways of facilitating its protagonist's escape from the restrictions brought about by the pandemic, Bonello's endearingly hopeful film skilfully captures the essence of what it was like to be a zoomer in lockdown.  For many of us during that time, the world got so much smaller—yet it can be argued that teenagers were among the most tech-savvy, and as such were well-equipped to rapidly identify ways in which to get a sense of the world beyond the proverbial four walls.  Sincerely presented as a letter to Bonello's teenaged daughter, Coma is a haunting, memorable conclusion to a fine trilogy.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Novice (Lauren Hadaway, 2021)

Lauren Hadaway's compelling debut feature The Novice, which plays at this year's BFI Flare on March 21 and 23, is a highly assured psychological drama, one that examines the sporting obsession of a young student.  In a way, the film is the antithesis of current cinema release The Phantom of the Open, a crowd-pleasing comedy based on the true story of likeable chancer Maurice Flitcroft, a man who'd never played golf yet somehow managed to blag his way into the prestigious British Open.  Before the tournament, Phantom's protagonist made a few half-hearted attempts to get to grips with the sport, with his weak and minimal efforts standing in stark contrast to the blood and sweat spilled by The Novice's Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), who is focused on the relatively low-stakes prize of a place on the university rowing team.  On the basis of Dall's gruelling routine as evidenced here, one shudders to think of the lengths she might go to if she had rowing's equivalent of the Open in her sights.    

Dall is an unsmiling freshman who works incredibly hard in class; on more than one occasion, we see her toiling away in an empty lecture theatre long after her fellow students and TA have called it a day.  Yet these academic endeavours pale in comparison with Alex's monomaniacal focus once she signs up for the rowing team, seemingly on a whim—as with The Phantom of the Open's hapless Flitcroft, Dall has no experience of the sport she's signed up for.  As the novice of the title, Alex is treated with disdain by the established members of the varsity team, although this does nothing to discourage the new girl, who barely seems to notice the stream of barbs and digs sent in her direction.  Rising at an ungodly hour to take to the rowing machine and/or water, Dall pushes herself so hard that her two coaches (Kate Drummond, Jonathan Cherry), who are so used to squeezing every last drop of effort from their charges, implore her to take it down a notch or three.

As Alex's efforts intensify, so does the viewer's feeling of unease; The Novice may begin like so many American college movies, but a real sense of foreboding gradually creeps in, and we begin to dread the ritual of Alex unlocking the gloomy boathouse, which occurs in an eerie early morning half-light in which a Lynchian jump scare seems not only feasible, but probable.  Although by no means an example of body horror, the film only grows more visceral as Dall's once merely sweat-drenched skin acquires raw, painful-looking blisters; there's also a fairly graphic scene in which Alex engages in self-harm.  Given that Dall tackles rowing with an almost religious fervour, it's hard to shake the idea that she's a flagellant, not unlike the one seen in another recent psychological thriller—which was also a debut feature—Rose Glass' outstanding Saint Maud.  Furthermore, Alex's seemingly arbitrary decision to take up rowing could be viewed as her answering a calling, of sorts.

While her raison d'être is to reach the pinnacle of the sport, Dall appears to gain no pleasure from her punishing training regime, and she seems to exist in a vacuum where the act of rowing is performed purely for its own sake; the other members of the team may as well not exist, and the real world, for the most part, melts away.  The Novice would make a good, if rather intense, double bill with The Perfect David—another title on offer at this year's Flare—in which a teenage bodybuilder goes to inordinate lengths in order to achieve what he deems to be the ideal physique.  Both films recall Gerard Johnson's excellent, unnerving Muscle, which also begins in a very real and recognisable world, only for the quotidian to take a back seat as a full-bore nightmare swirls around its protagonist.  Fuhrman, previously best known for playing the title character in the 2009 horror Orphan, gives a truly committed performance as the obsessed Alex, and director Hadaway ensures that the rest of the film complements this troubling, riveting turn.   

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (Syllas Tzoumerkas, 2019)

The Netherlands Film Fund is one of the backers of The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea, which features a fine lead performance by Angeliki Papoulia, an actress best known for her work with Yorgos Lanthimos - namely Dogtooth, Alps and The Lobster.  Sargasso's mood and feel are both very much in line with those found in Lanthimos' work, and Syllas Tzoumerkas' film is certainly a good fit for the rather clumsy "Weird Wave" label that's been thrown around for the past decade.  With its exposure of the darkness that lies at the heart of a seemingly sleepy town, comparisons to the work of David Lynch are as inevitable as they are helpful to the film's marketability, although to my mind it has more in common with Claire Denis' brilliant, if horrible, Les Salauds and Carol Morley's mood piece murder-mystery Out of Blue.

Papoulia plays what is quite possibly the angriest chief of police ever seen on screen, and her drunken, foul-mouthed but dogged Elisabeth strongly recalls the recent turns by Patricia Clarkson in the aforementioned Out of Blue and Nicole Kidman in Destroyer.  The film begins with Elisabeth leading a city anti-terrorist unit, but a botched raid forces her and her son to move away to a small, remote seaside town, which she thoroughly resents.  When Elisabeth isn't berating virtually everyone who crosses her path, she's drinking; sometimes, she combines these two pastimes to predictably chaotic effect.  Things get more interesting for Elisabeth when seedy lounge singer Manolis (Christos Passalis) is found dead on a beach; it's apparently a suicide, but the chief of police decides to dig deeper, which reveals a lot more about the town and its inhabitants.  Elisabeth takes a special interest in Manolis' sister, Rita (Youla Boudali, who co-wrote the film with the director), a withdrawn, timid young woman who has a grim job at an eel farm.

It's fairly clear that Elisabeth has more interest in getting to the bottom of things than the director does, and Tzoumerkas is far more concerned with peppering his film with religious imagery and nightmarish vignettes than he is with anything as trifling as the forensics of police work.  The mystery aspect, such as it is, doesn't take much solving by the viewer, but it doesn't really matter when there's such a rich, dark atmosphere to soak up, not to mention a leading actress on top form.  The supporting performances are good, too, with Passalis' standout moment coming when his creepy Manolis has an onstage meltdown and treats his audience to an expletive-heavy tirade against his, and their,  hometown; Manolis recalls Dave from Lost River, who in turn echoed Blue Velvet's Ben.

The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea is generally strong stuff - although Attenberg remains, by some distance, the best film out of the Weird Wave titles; if Sargasso has a weakness, it lies in the director's attempts to align his film with the movement via button-pushing.  After viewing the likes of Dogtooth, not many will be shocked by what is presented here, and the few explicit scenes in Tzoumerkas' film feel more tired than transgressive.  There's also a clunky, overdone analogy involving eels and the ocean of the title, which really should have been pruned back.  But, on the whole, The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea is an absorbing, atmospheric and well-made riff on the hard-boiled cop movie.  It screens at the London Film Festival today and tomorrow.

Darren Arnold

Images: image.net

November (Rainer Sarnet, 2017)

Rainer Sarnet's film, produced with support from the Netherlands Film Fund and the Netherlands Film Production Incentive, is an ambitious work which sits somewhere between Hard to Be a God and the work of David Lynch.  A folk tale set in the 19th century, November centres on the stories of poor farm girl Liina (Rea Lest) and fellow peasant Hans (Jörgen Liik).  Although she's promised to a grotesque farmer, Liina has romantic designs on Hans, who in turn only has eyes for the somnambulist daughter (Jette Loona Hermanis) of a German aristocrat (Dieter Laser, familiar from Tom Six's Human Centipede trilogy).  Both Hans and Liina are stretching for a love which seems out of reach, yet with superstition and magic seemingly all around the village (despite - or because of - the presence of the Church), the pair resort to other, darker means in order to capture the hearts of those they desire.

One way in which magic manifests itself is in the form of kratt, creatures who live to work and are usually made up of tools and other pieces of wood and metal; these oddities only come to life when they're furnished with a soul, which their masters obtain via a bargain with the devil (Satan is personified here, and always meets those looking to animate a kratt at, quite appropriately, a deserted crossroads).  Some try to dupe the devil by signing his book in berry juice instead of their blood, but it's a trick he soon becomes wise to.  If all this wasn't enough, the villagers also have to contend with werewolves (which Liina may know a little something about) and the plague which, amusingly, takes the form of a goat.  

All Souls' Day, which occurs during the month of the film's title, features in the story in a rather novel way: rather than the dead simply being remembered, here they actually come back for the day, and return to their families and homes; the eerie nocturnal sequence in which the villagers collect the departed from the graveyard is both highly effective and rather moving.  The treatment of All Souls' Day is a good marker of how the villagers view, and deal with, Christianity (communion wafers are coughed up to be used as bullets for hunting - the logic being that Jesus can fell any animal).  Christ's teachings exist as just one of the belief systems in place, with paganism also playing a prominent role here; it's as if these venal villagers take a pick 'n' mix approach to religion, borrowing bits of different philosophies in order to attain their selfish goals.

While much of the film takes on a very serious tone, there a number of laugh-out-loud moments, the bulk of which come courtesy of the kratt, which stand as the most bizarre entities glimpsed on a screen since the manifestation of the Man from Another Place in Twin Peaks: The Return.  Watching a kratt move (and talk) is as funny as it is disconcerting, and the quiver of a misery whip which tops a pile of newly-disassembled kratt parts is a comic highlight.  The kratt are also capable of eliciting other emotions, too: the film's menacing opening sequence sees one of the creatures stealing a very worried cow, while there's a real melancholy to the scenes between the lovelorn Hans and his snowman kratt (by far the least utilitarian of the creatures featured here, but you'll miss him when he's gone).

It would be wrong to review November and not mention what is undoubtedly the film's strongest suit: the cinematography.  Mart Taniel's lensing really is a joy to behold, and the stark, icy monochrome images are little short of incredible. Taniel contributes so much to the film's rich atmosphere, and his work means that the film is never dull, even if the story can be best described as fitfully engaging.  While the film could use a bit of tightening up in places, it throws around enough in the way of interesting ideas to ensure that viewer concentration never wanders; a lively and fitting score also does much to help move things along.  

Darren Arnold

Images: Eureka Video

Highway to Hell (Ate de Jong, 1991)

At the end of the last post I promised more Ate de Jong, and this time around we're looking at his 1991 comedy horror Highway to Hell.  This film appeared hot on the heels of de Jong's critically panned Drop Dead Fred, and I recall it playing at the 1992 Edinburgh International Film Festival.  I was covering the festival that year, but a scheduling conflict meant I was unable to catch the film.  I remember being greatly irked by this, as the brochure made it sound like one I really shouldn't pass up on, and I knew it was going to be tricky to track the film down once it had played the festival circuit.  Of course, in these digital times it's pretty easy to locate most films that have had any sort of a release, but back in those days viewing options were very limited, so you may find my annoyance at missing the screening more understandable if you can imagine/remember a world without Netflix or Amazon.

While the festival brochure made the film sound like a must-see, keep in mind that the blurb in festival programmes, quite understandably, gives everything the hard sell, with pretty much each and every film on the bill made to sound up there with Citizen Kane.  But much more enticing than the gushing thumbs-up description was the image of the film's poster boy, Hellcop (although oddly, he's not on the front of the German VHS release).  Hellcop looked a likely horror icon in waiting as soon as I first clapped eyes on the picture in the EIFF brochure, and I wasn't too surprised to learn that he was played by C. J. Graham, who already had experience of playing a bona fide horror icon in the form of Jason Voorhees (Graham donned the hockey mask in the 6th Friday the 13th film).  Hellcop may have failed to reach anything like the heights scaled by Jason, but his arresting (ha!) image does make him one of the more memorable villains of early 90s horror.

Young couple Charlie and Rachel (Chad Lowe, Kristy Swanson) have decided to elope, and en route to Vegas they find themselves pulled over by Hellcop, who promptly drags Rachel off to Hell.  A frantic Charlie heads back to the service station the couple stopped at earlier, where he's lent a car and a shotgun by kindly owner Sam (Richard Farnsworth).  Sam reveals that his own fiancee (Pamela Gidley) was also taken away to Hell, where she remains, and he gives Charlie some tips as to how he might save Rachel before it's too late.  Charlie duly finds his way in to Hell, where, as you might expect, Rachel proves difficult to find.  His quest is made a bit easier by suspiciously-named mechanic Beezle (Patrick Bergin), who steps in at a critical moment to help out the desperate Charlie; Beezle also has some further advice regarding how Rachel may be found.  And of course, there's always the added problem of Hellcop...

While I must admit that Highway to Hell didn't quite deliver in the way I thought it would when I first became aware of it in 1992, it's still a lot of fun, and it is easy to see why it has attracted something of a cult following over the decades.  As a schlocky riff on the Orpheus-Eurydice legend, it works fairly well, although it's unlikely to ever unseat Jean Cocteau's Orpheus as the best cinematic take on the myth.  While it's mainly played for laughs, there's one very creepy scene involving Charlie catching Rachel's reflection in a mirror; unfortunately, the scene's effectiveness is diluted as it goes on to show way too much, eventually descending into camp.  The two leads are both fine - Lowe (younger brother of Rob) gives the sort of performance we're now used to seeing from Sam Rockwell, while a pre-Buffy Swanson brings some nice humour to the part of Rachel.  But the film is really notable for its other couple, played by two late performers who would each go on to give their most memorable turns in David Lynch films: Farnsworth excelled in The Straight Story, while the striking Gidley - who died just a few months ago - made a real impression as Twin Peaks' Teresa Banks.  Highway to Hell is cheerful, untaxing B movie fun, and a region-free Blu-ray can be ordered from Spain.

Darren Arnold

Image: Rob Mieremet [CC0]

Quality Time (Daan Bakker, 2017)

While it misses more often than it hits, Daan Bakker's portmanteu film is nothing if not original, and it would have made for a far bolder choice for the Netherlands' submission to the Oscars; although shortlisted, Quality Time lost out to the rather pedestrian Layla M.  Bakker's film contains five separate stories, each of which features a different man and his own crisis, and, as is the case with many anthology films, the quality of the segments is far from consistent.

The first, and best, section features Koen, a man who is tired of the regular family gatherings where he's unfailingly called on to devour ham and guzzle milk as some sort of party piece.  Koen's "act" greatly amuses all but himself, and the section follows him from dreading the occasion to going through the motions at the event.  Koen is represented by a white dot not dissimilar to the ball in early videogame Pong, and he speaks in a robotic monotone.  As his story progresses, other, equally rudimentary dots appear on screen and interact with Koen as the party gets into full swing.  It's a clever, amusing stretch of the film, and while Koen's consumption at the party is no funnier to us than it is to him, the feat pulled off by Bakker is impressive: before the end of Koen's story, a machine-voiced spot on the screen has become a character we've bought into.

The second section is not as successful, but does intrigue as the apparently traumatised Stefaan takes a camera and tours some of his childhood haunts.  Quite what's happened to him is hard to discern, but it's a melancholy segment in which the slightly threatening Stefaan often seems close to harming those who now populate the places from his past.  We're left to piece it all together from brief glimpses of the photos he takes, but it's all just a bit too opaque to be properly satisfying.

The middle story features a time machine, as Kjell goes back to rectify the childhood trauma that he feels has affected the rest of his life.  This sounds like a relatively straightforward tale, and it is until it's hijacked by a bizarre, extended medieval interlude.  As the section plods on, it runs out of both steam and focus, and what started out as an interesting idea winds up something of a mess.

The fourth instalment is, by a country mile, the strangest of the five stories.  It's hard to know where to start with this one, but it features a man called Karel and an alien abduction.  There's definitely a Lynchian sensibility at work in this one, with imagery that could easily have come from the recent, third season of Twin Peaks, and it gets things back on track after the two rather disappointing tales that have preceded it.

The final section sees Jef trying just a bit too hard to endear himself to his girlfriend's parents.  After what's immediately preceded it, Jef's story is particularly jarring as it is the most straightforward of any of the tales.  While it's fun to squirm along with Jef as he does his best to please, it doesn't really go anywhere until a killer caption appears at the very end.

Quality Time is certainly different, partially successful, and always ambitious.  While a bit more consistency would have been welcomed, Bakker has done well to link these seemingly disparate tales to a single theme, and pathos is to be found in all of the film's sections.  Of course, with the best served up first, you could always bail after Koen's story, but, as anticlimactic as the following sections are, that really wouldn't be very fair; Bakker's film deserves to be seen to the end, and it has just enough about it to warrant your time .  It screens at the London Film Festival on the 12th and 14th of October.

Darren Arnold

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